A new year treat: Snowfall in Los Santos

Somewhere along the line my family got into the habit of a New Year’s Day wander. Generally we’d set off along the coast, which is only a short walk away in itself. We wouldn’t head far, and there’d be no objective in mind. It was just the perfect way – chill, airy, bright – to begin another twelve months of whatever the world had in store for us.

This year, we awoke to a storm: rain falling, fences buckling. A wander was out of the question. But then faced with the prospect of a grey day indoors, my wife fired up GTA Online.

And behold! Los Santos was covered in snow. Flakes were falling through the night sky, the palm trees were casting strange wintery shadows, and the whole world around Pillbox Hill was covered in white. Los Santos felt clean and weird and it had that theatrical calm that real snow can bring to busy places.

Ultimately, this was as good as a wander. Instead of rambling along the coast, we spent the afternoon bombing around in a series of cars my wife called in from Johnny on the Spot. And eventually we scored a moped and settled into delivering pizzas. What a weird game this has become: thirty minutes spent knocking back and forth along familiar streets, stopping in doorways we’d never noticed before and earning $43k for our time. In Los Santos, delivering pizzas involves some serious bank.